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The Hebrew calendar
(Hebrew: הלוח העברי) or Jewish calendar is the
annual calendar used in Judaism. It determines the
dates of the Jewish holidays, the appropriate Torah
portions for public reading, Yahrzeits (the date to
commemorate the death of a relative), and the
specific daily Psalms which some customarily read.
Two major forms of the calendar have been used: an
observational form used prior to the destruction of
the Second Temple in 70 CE, and based on witnesses
observing the phase of the moon, and a rule-based
form first fully described by Maimonides in 1178 CE,
which was adopted over a transition period between
70 and 1178.
The "modern" form is a rule-based lunisolar calendar,
akin to the Chinese calendar, measuring months
defined in lunar cycles as well as years measured in
solar cycles, and distinct from the purely lunar
Islamic calendar and the almost entirely solar
Gregorian calendar. Because of the roughly 11 day
difference between twelve lunar months and one solar
year, the calendar repeats in a Metonic 19-year
cycle of 235 lunar months, with an extra lunar month
added once every two or three years, for a total of
seven times every nineteen years. As the Hebrew
calendar was developed in the region east of the
Mediterranean Sea, references to seasons reflect the
times and climate of the Northern Hemisphere.
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